Geospatial image data is often used to generate a map of a geographical area to denote a variety of geographic features. Such geospatial image data is gathered by a variety of techniques, such as via satellites and aircraft, and encompasses data gathered by a variety of sensor mediums, such as optical, radar, infrared, laser, and others. Often, the geospatial image data must be processed through mathematical synthesizing operations to obtain a desired output image. The synthesizing operations typically require significant manual efforts, and require substantial time and computational resources to compute. Accordingly, the desired output images may only be gathered periodically, must anticipate a substantial time delay, and require manual intervention in order to modify or apply a new synthesizing operation to the geospatial data to obtain the desired output image.
Raw geospatial data has been and continues to be gathered by a variety of governmental and private entities. The National Image and Mapping Agency (NIMA), The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), and the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) are among the various entities that catalog raw geospatial data. The raw geospatial data is typically used in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) according to protocols such as the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI), promulgated by the FGDC, and embodied in the National Geospatial Data Clearinghouse, a public domain collection of geospatial data organized to promote cooperative production and sharing of geospatial data among federal, state, academic, corporate, and private entities having an interest in geospatial data. While initially developed to support intelligence operations for military purposes, geospatial data is now being used for a variety of research and consumer purposes, including oil and gas mining, agricultural conditions, outdoor expeditions such as camping, hunting and fishing, and recreation such as golf and flight simulation.
Traditionally, geospatial images produced from raw geospatial data have been produced through time intensive manual computations. The raw geospatial data is gathered from various sensors focused on a particular geographic area. These computations typically gather the raw geospatial data from a variety of geographic areas, and synthesize the desired output image. The synthesizing operations typically include polynomial warping techniques to distort one image to match one of an adjacent geographic area, and resampling techniques to project, filter, combine, fuse, and mask the images represented by the raw geospatial data. Other synthesizing operations are known to those skilled in the art. Since the synthesizing operations are performed by a time intensive manual sequence, the results typically represent a static archive because the resultant output images are used in static form with infrequent modification.
For example, a desired output image might represent a fusion of an optical satellite image with an infrared aircraft scanning of a land mass having fossil fuel reserves to facilitate mining or oil production. Similarly, an agricultural application might involve a combining of a high resolution monochrome image with a lower resolution color image to ascertain or predict vegetation patterns. A PC application might employ images of a variety of golf courses to provide a realistic simulation. Many other uses and applications can be contemplated.
As illustrated above, generation of geospatial images corresponding to a desired output image can be time and computationally intensive. Manual manipulation of the various parameters that define each instantiation of the desired output image is required. It would be beneficial, therefore, to provide a system and method for allowing user selectable parameters to specify the image synthesizing operations which define a desired output image, to allow interactive realtime generation of the desired output image from a remote computing device based upon the user selectable parameters, and to provide delivery of the desired output image to the user via an electronic medium such as the Internet.